Collaborative Project: Understanding Impact: A Scaling and Replication Study of the Curriculum Customization Service

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This NSDL Targeted Research project is part of a four-way collaborative effort involving 1043638, U. Colorado (lead institution); 1043858, Utah State University; 1043660, UCAR; and 1043717, the University of Utah. The investigators seek to understand the impact, replicability, and scalability of the NSDL Curriculum Customization Service (CCS) across four different school district deployment sites. CCS is a web-based software tool that enables teachers to: (1) customize their science instruction using digital library resources, formative assessments, and district-developed materials to aid student learning and (2) share these customizations as part of an online learning community. Three major themes guiding this research are: (i) impact on students (e.g. study of learning outcomes and self-reported engagement with science content); (ii) impact on teachers (e.g. examination of teachers' attitudes, beliefs, practices, and knowledge surrounding curriculum customization, integration of digital library resources in the classroom, and teacher learning) and (iii) how differences in deployment site characteristics (districts and schools) influence student learning outcomes and teachers' knowledge. The intellectual merit of the project lies in its grounding in a successful pilot study in which the Denver Public Schools adopted the CCS system for all its earth science teachers district-wide. With respect to broader impacts the project offers a model for the dissemination of educational technology through a key "unit" of the K-12 educational enterprise, namely adoption by the local school district.